Why do the Hebrew Alphabetic Presentation Forms Exist

[Mark E. Shoulson]

On 6/4/20 3:59 AM, Richard Wordingham via Unicode wrote:
> On Wed, 3 Jun 2020 23:02:44 -0400
> "Mark E. Shoulson via Unicode" <unicode at unicode.org> wrote:
>
>> I don't know of any font machinery that can actually change things
>> based on what's present on the previous *line*; that may not be
>> supported. But you can bet that such a thing won't be reason enough
>> to encode a new character.
> And that leads to a problem that would not be solved by the encoding of
> a new character.  If the position of line breaks may change, or the
> text may be reset in a font with different relative character widths,
> then which lamedhs are bent would change.
>
> Arguably, the right place for standardisation is probably OpenType and
> AAT features - and it might even be addressed already.
Yes, exactly.  An author (or typesetting program, higher level than a 
font) would have to choose the right variant for each LAMED... which is 
what 'salt' tables are for, isn't it?

~mark